Gekkan Hora Jesse-san
by Ariza Luca
Summary: In which Stella is a Pan Disaster (trademarked), Jesse is oblivious, their friends are wacky, and shenanigans ensue. Oh yeah, and Jesse's pen name is actually a rather famous horror manga artist that is featured in a serialized monthly magazine. You know. Normal stuff. (Technically a Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun crossover but) (some swearing so it's a T but otherwise that's really it)
1. I'm Your Fan

"_I'M YOUR FAN!_"

Stella instantly clapped her hands over her mouth in utter mortification at that rather loud (and somewhat inaccurate) sentence.

_Shitfuckcrapwhy did I _say_ that, I wanted to say that I wanted to go on a date with you..._

She hadn't noticed that while she was having an internal meltdown about this mistake, Jesse Oswalt-Taber, who was 18 but looked like they still belonged in the eighth grade, had made a soft sound and was writing something down.

"Here you are!"

Stella blinked down at the paper with a very messy autograph on it and a name written in the top right corner. It looked as if ink had gotten splattered everywhere all over the paper in the process.

Stella Alberts, 17. Upon confessing to her crush, she received an autograph.

_Eh?! That's not... well, I guess I did say that I was their fan..._

She looked back up from the paper. "That's not- I mean- I, I, I always want to be with you, is... what... I meant..."

Jesse's brow furrowed, their dark hair flopping slightly over their shoulder as they tilted their head to consider this statement. "Always be with me...?"

_ABORT ABORT ABORT I DIDN'T MEAN TO SAY THAT EITHER I SHOULD'VE JUST SAID I LIKE THEM LIKE A NORMAL PERSON! I don't really know what to do with someone this small and- and-__ and naive-_

"Then do you want to come to my house?" Jesse asked, interrupting Stella's second internal meltdown over her flubbing up what she was trying to say in the past ten minutes.

"Your house!"

* * *

"Ah, it's lucky you came, I really couldn't find anyone," Jesse hummed happily as they walked through the door of the apartment. Stella almost stopped and let the door smack her in the face (it was a heavy door), but happened to nip through in the nick of time.

_You bring girls to your house all the time?! ... jeez, you're less naive than I thought..._

Stella frowned, drumming her fingers on her arm as she thought about this for a minute. She hadn't actually thought that much before agreeing to follow Jesse to their apartment. (It was a nice apartment, actually, surprisingly tidy and a little cutesy.)

She supposed it would be better to go home, if they were going to move this fast...

But then again, if she left, they'd just bring another girl home.

She didn't want that.

Well then!

"Je-Jesse, I'll- _I'll do my best!_"

"Okay, then fill in between the lines." Jesse had sat down at a table and started drawing something, but they now handed her a paper with what looked like a horror manga's panels, except with no color. There were Xs drawn in certain sections.

"Color in the areas with an X... oh, and use black ink."

"...?"

* * *

"Stella, you missed a spot here..." Jesse paused, looking at the page Stella had just filled in. After a moment, they gave a pleased sort of smile and hum.

"Oh! You're really good at this."

Stella didn't reply, dipping the brush into some more ink and continuing to fill in the spots with the Xs dutifully.

* * *

Jesse came back into the living room with two cups of coffee. One cup had a little horrifyingly cutesy character on it that looked a lot like one of the characters on the page Jesse had passed to her (and that somehow was familiar to Stella even beyond that, but she wasn't really thinking about that right now).

"Stella, we should probably take a break now..."

Stella paused to take the cup so that Jesse didn't spill it, took a sip, set it off to the side, and continued filling in the spots with the Xs.

* * *

"_WAIT, JESSE, YOU'RE A MANGA ARTIST?!_"

Jesse paused at the gate, blinking at a rather startled Stella in perplexed bemusement. "Eh...? You didn't know before you did beta for four hours straight?"

"Beta... like, like manga beta? Like coloring in spots with black?" Stella stammered out, looking more confused with every passing moment.

"Well, yes... you just did it for four hours straight," was Jesse's rather baffled reply. They were looking increasingly adorable and bemused with every passing second. "You really didn't know?"

"No!"

"Oh." Jesse considered this for a moment, tilting their head slightly again and crowding out Stella's confusion with thoughts of _they're so cute_ as they did so. "Well, it's being serialized in a monthly magazine right now. You can feel free to check it out, if you want!"

Stella blinked several times at Jesse, trying to get this new fact about Jesse squared away without completely losing her crap. "Oh... uh, thank- thanks. That's- that's very- very nice of you."

"Why? I'm just saying you can check out my manga." Jesse gave Stella a rather cheerful grin, before lifting their hand in a friendly wave. "Uh, I'd better get to bed. We've got school tomorrow. Night!"

"Oh... oh, yes. Um. Good night." Stella clutched the strap of her bag and waved to Jesse with a stupid smile before they disappeared into the apartment. The moment they did, she hummed and started walking back home, still trying to equate _Jesse_ and _manga artist_ in her head.

After a while, she realized she was still smiling stupidly and cleared her throat, wiping it off her face and replacing it with a calm, almost stately behavior. "Well. Jesse... Jesse is much cooler than I expected. I don't read much manga... it tends to trend along the horror genre when I do, though..."

Her cheeks flushed at this admission, and she rifled through her bag and pulled out the paper with the autograph, along with the magazine with the manga she'd been reading lately emblazoned across the front cover.

(She was so proud. She'd followed this manga for a really long time. It deserved the attention it got; the horrific drawings were graphic without just being pages of gore, the suspense could really keep your attention, and yet it wasn't just straight-up horror- there were moments where you got attached to the protagonists, and it was stupidly funny at points.

Actually, it was more of a humor-horror-romance-family fusion.

She loved it with her heart and soul.)

"Well, I might check out Jesse's manga anyway..." She checked the autograph; amusingly it was under a pen name. She supposed that made sense; otherwise everyone at school would've known. "Let's see, their pen name is... Casey... Walters..."

_Wait_-

Her eyes snapped to the magazine with the horror manga on the title. The author's name was in the upper right hand corner, so she saw it easily.

_Casey Walters._

Stella probably would've stopped right then and there, except that would've meant she'd stopped in the middle of a very deserted road, so she didn't.

"_What?!_"

* * *

Casey Walters.

Despite being absolutely unknown at first, they'd shot onto one of the most popular manga magazines in the area because their storylines and artwork were appreciated by both boys and girls- boys enjoyed the somewhat dark, edgy humor and gritty imagery, while girls loved the often adorable-looking characters and the sweet, more intimate moments with family and romantic interests.

Their characters were also extremely realistic; but what they were really known for was their dark, suspenseful mysteries and settings and ability to make a strange circumstance seem totally normal.

"Hey guys!"

"Jesse, don't be so excited, it's eight in the morning..."

"But it's so nice out today! Look! There's a bird there!"

Olivia groaned from where her head was on her desk. "Look, that's nice, Jess, but I wanna get two minutes of sleep before the bell rings."

Stella stared dubiously at Jesse for several moments.

Casey Walters was able to make terror jump out of the page with just a few words, and didn't rely on graphic gore or imagery to scare people. It was simplistic, but eerie and suspenseful all at once.

"Ah! Axel! Quit picking me up!"

Jesse flailed around in Axel's grip with a nervous giggle. "You're gonna drop meeee!"

"Nah, you're light. I can hold you like you were a five year old."

"_Axel!_"

"Axel, quit teasing Jesse, they're too little to hold their ground."

"_I'm older than both of you!_"

Stella stared even more dubiously at Jesse.

* * *

Because it was just so weird to think of Jesse as a manga artist who drew _horror_ of all things, she went up. "Hey, Mx. Walters, I like your stuff."

"Eh! That's so weird being called that at school," Jesse chuckled as they walked through the hallway with Stella. "Just call me Jesse, please and thank you."

"Oh. No one else knows? Not even Axel and Olivia?" Stella asked, tilting her head at Jesse.

Jesse hummed, considering this. "No, I don't think Axel and Olivia know either... actually, I think you're one of the only ones."

Stella's head snapped around to look at Jesse, eyes the size of saucers. "R... really?"

_Could it be that I'm special?!_

"I mean, it's not like anyone would believe me even if I told 'em," Jesse said musingly, unknowingly breaking that hope to pieces. "I mean, I guess Axel and Liv would, but I wanna see if they can figure it out. Ooh, maybe that could be a part of the story..."

Stella gave a slightly defeated laugh and rubbed her arm. She supposed it was silly to assume that in the first place.

"Oh! By the way, Stella, thanks a lot for yesterday. I hope I didn't cause any troubles for you with the Art Club."

Stella almost came to a stop in her tracks at that. "Wait, you- you know my club activities?" she asked, her bewilderment very evident in her voice.

"Oh, yeah. I've been keeping an eye on you for a while, actually," Jesse said mildly.

"Wait- really?!"

Jesse bobbed their head in a nod. "Yeah. When you draw posters, you really almost never color outside the lines, but it's filled as completely as you can, so I figured you'd do good beta work!"

"Ahhh, you were eyeing my artwork..." Stella gave another defeated laugh, trying to quell her rapidly rising and falling hopes. At this rate, she'd break out. "Er, I'm glad you liked it, I guess."

"It's really nice! You always just color really well," Jesse replied happily.

Stella nodded, considering this, before tilting her head at Jesse. "Hey, Jess, why did you want to draw a horror manga? I would've pinned you for a kid's manga or something."

"Oh, well... I thought it was interesting. Also, the artwork can be really fun to do," Jesse said cheerfully.

Stella hummed, pressing her lips together. Sure, that was a pretty good reply, but the horror manga was a nice break from the horrific nature of a lot of other ones- there was humor, and romance, and lots of cute fluff. Still, at that rate, Jesse could probably write a good shoujo manga, not horror...

"Ah, well, I guess I don't have much experience with creepy experiences..." Stella murmured musingly, continuing down the hallway.

"Why's that an obstacle? I haven't even gone into a haunted house before!"

_Then why on earth did you want to draw a horror_ _manga_?!

* * *

"Well, I guess I do have a lot more experience drawing shoujo... I kinda wanted to try something new. I haven't ever dated before, though, I just usually give a lot of random advice to people, so it's kinda the same with the horror manga," Jesse hummed as they worked on a panel that looked as though it featured some kind of smokey demon.

After a few minutes, they looked up, as if something had occurred to them. "Do you have anyone you like?"

"Me... oh." Stella looked down at the panel she was doing the beta for with a small frown. She'd gone back to Jesse's apartment that very day to draw.

Or, more accurately, do more beta.

"Well... uh, yes. At first, I just really liked them because they were really cute, and they were very kind to everyone they met...

"I confessed, but they didn't really know... still, now I talk to them more, and I think that's a rather nice change of pace," she chuckled, adding some more black ink to the panel. "I think they don't really think of me as a friend, though- just someone who can do work for them."

Jesse blinked, looking rather perplexed at this dreamy confession from Stella.

"What's so good about a person like that?"

Stella, had she been an anime character, would have instantly sweatdropped.

_Sometimes I wonder the same thing..._

* * *

Stella frowned as she walked through the hallway, scuffing her feet along the floor. "Is it really okay to keep going like this... I haven't confessed. At this point, I think I just turned into an assistant... right, then!"

She sped up, walking down the hallway briskly and throwing the door open to where Jesse was in the classroom by themselves.

_Time to confess!_

Again.

"Jesse!"

Jesse jumped slightly, almost knocking a few papers off the desk and onto the floor. "Oh! Hey, Stella, what's-"

"I- I- I- um- that is to say- ah- _I'M YOUR FAN!_"

Jesse gave a slightly amused sigh, taking a blank piece of paper and beginning to sign another autograph. "Okay, okay. I know by now, you know."

* * *

**A/N: Welcome to Gekkan Hora Jesse-san, where Stella is a Pan Disaster, Jesse is oblivious, and shenanigans happen. Oh, and Jesse's pen name is actually a very famous horror manga writer.**

**Yes, I know I haven't updated October Children in a while, but I needed to write something happy, so _here you go_ we have absolute nonsense scrawled on a screen.**

***pst if you read Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun or watch the anime we can be bffs it's really good***

**Well, that's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye!**

**x.X. A.L. X.x**


	2. Hearts Beating (Pedaling) in Tandem

Jesse came to school a lot looking horrifically tired and with compresses all over them. Sometimes they had medically taped them to their neck, their hand... pretty much everywhere.

"Hey, Jesse... you alright?" Olivia once asked them, looking at their hand. It had a huge compress taped to it.

Jesse, unlike their usual cheerful demeanor, had simply grunted slightly with a jerk of their head and returned to doing classwork.

They got a few whispers, and once Axel had refused to let them go anywhere without staying near them.

There were rumors that there was a gang that collected money from Jesse, and since Jesse didn't have enough money, they beat them up and Jesse had to bear the results to school.

Stella couldn't help but grin slightly. She knew better now.

The compresses were for tendovaginitis- she'd had to look it up when Jesse told her, it was basically inflammation where the muscle connected to bone- or for having a stiff neck, and they'd just not slept for a few nights.

"Ah, ah, there was a deadline..." Stella chuckled as she did the beta for another page. This time, the characters were in a haunted hotel. "For a while, I think I believed the rumors when people said you had gotten mixed up with a gang."

"Oh, so my neck's an easy target... that's kinda spooky. Huh... we could probably sneak some bullies or delinquents into the manga. Hm... I dunno what you would usually put in a manga for that, though... what do you think of when you think delinquents or bullies?"

Stella tapped the brush on the paper for a moment. "Well... smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol, is what immediately comes to mind. Skipping school, as well."

Jesse's lips twisted a little. They looked a bit unhappy. "Ahhhhh, that's a problem... I'm not allowed to 'break the law' in the manga, since the company doesn't wanna be known for that. So the cigarettes and alcohol would have to turn into chocolate cigarettes and the alcohol would have to be apple juice."

Stella blinked. "Oh... that sounds ridiculous."

"It kinda is... I guess I'll have to ditch the delinquent idea until I find something better," Jesse sighed a little reluctantly, apparently mentally setting it aside and sliding another page over to Stella.

Stella took a look at it, glancing over the Xs. Juliet- the female protagonist- was blushing horribly, rubbing her arm and glancing down at the floor. "_Um... can... can I go home with you?_" said the speech bubble.

"_Ah, but... I've got my bike._" Rosaline, Juliet's love interest (yes, Juliet had a love interest in the horror manga, it would make it all the more heartbreaking to watch either of them die) gestured at the stupidly rickety looking bike.

"Oh! Are you planning on including this moment in the horror manga?"

Jesse nodded cheerfully, drawing another panel with the hand that did not have a compress pressed to it.

(Jesse was ambidextrous.)

(So cool.)

"Yeah, I thought it'd be a nice respite from 'ahhh scary scary' and all that."

"This is the perfect set-up for those traditional romantic scenes! You know- the girl sitting on the back of the bicycle, feeling the guy- well, in this case, the other girl's body heat from behind... trying to figure out where she should hold on... her heart pounding and her shaking hands..." Stella couldn't help but blush a little at the idea of doing that with Jesse.

_Look okay it was schoolgirlish but she was seventeen. Forget casual flirting she wanted candlelit dinners and standing at the doors with flowers and little walks in the park. She wanted to be fucking _wooed.

Jesse looked so crushed that it was absolutely heartbreaking. "It's a traffic violation now..."

Stella made a sympathetic sound and leaned over the table to squeeze Jesse's hand _(which sent freaking _butterflies_ blasting through her stomach at the simple, careful motion but_ holy mackarel_ this was worth_ _it_). "Oh, sweetie, I am so sorry..."

It took a few minutes to get over the disappointment of the loss of this adorable scene, but Jesse straightened after a while and stared down at the panel artwork. "Okay, so the aim is for Juliet to go home with Rosaline and get to that haunted house on the way, but that's next issue so I don't have to worry about it. It could just be like this-" and they began drawing.

After only a few minutes, they had a rough sketch of Juliet next to Rosaline as Rosaline walked her bike home.

Stella hummed, regarding the sketch. "Yeah, but it's not _the_ most romantic thing... there's nothing that can be done about that, though."

"Then..." Jesse pulled the paper back and produced another rough sketch. This time, Juliet was chasing after Rosaline as Rosaline road her bike down the road.

"The _worst_! Rosaline's the freaking worst!" Stella almost instantly shouted, nearly upsetting the table in her irritation because look, Rosaline and Juliet were perfect together but _how dare Rosaline pull such a stunt._

"Okay, okay, then-" Jesse hastily took the offending sketch and added a new one. This time, Juliet was riding the bike, and Rosaline had a string attached to one of the bike handles.

Stella stared at this new sketch, distracted from the one where Rosaline was absolutely awful to poor Juliet. "... it looks like Juliet's riding a horse..."

* * *

"Hey, Stella!" Jesse said cheerfully the next day, beaming up at her from the doorway to Stella's classroom. This raised some murmurs; seniors usually did not come to the junior classrooms. "Wanna go home together?"

"Go- go home? Us? Together?" Stella rather eloquently stammered out as whispers sprang up in the classroom. Olivia in particular- the only sophomore who was in Stella's math class- raised her eyebrow.

"Yeah!"

Stella smoothed out her school skirt, clearing her throat when she noticed everyone whispering about them, and gathered up her things neatly before calmly walking out the door with Jesse.

"I've got a bike we can ride home together on today," Jesse said cheerfully, hiking up their bag a little so that it wouldn't bang against their leg too much.

Stella's face went from normal to fire-engine-red in the span of two seconds. "Eh?!"

But Jesse had said it was a traffic violation... maybe she'd been a little too excited the previous day about it. She wondered if Jesse was going to stop by a haunted house or something... how was she going to _ride_ the bike, though, that was the question. Perhaps Jesse would have to stand on the back of the bike and cling to her shoulders while she pedaled? That was the only way she could think of some arrangement or similarly so working. Maybe it _wouldn't_ work, though, it was rather unwieldy to stand on the bike like that-

"Stella?"

Stella snapped out of her pensive thoughts to shake her head furiously and look at Jesse with wide hazel eyes. For her, since she'd been daydreaming a little, it looked as though the bike racks had sprouted up around her. "Huh? Yeah?"

"This is the bike!" Jesse said cheerfully, pointing at the bike that they were talking about. Stella followed their finger with her eyes to see...

A tandem bike.

Stella almost simultaneously laughed and sweatdropped at that; as it was she scratched her cheek at the complete lack of shame Jesse had at bringing this thing in (_but they didn't care about being giggled at in the hallways, they never noticed, and that made them so strangely cool)._

* * *

"... how does it feel?"

Stella considered this, watching Jesse pedal and bob around kinda cutely in front of her.

(_Fuck fuck fuck this was so cute having all of these strangers gawk at her was totally worth watching Jesse pedal in the front of the tandem bike._)

"... it's kinda relaxing, actually."

"Okay... oh, we're gonna turn right here, okay?" Jesse raised their arm to point at where they were going to turn.

"Okay."

They turned right at the corner Jesse had indicated.

"... turn at the next corner."

"Alright."

"... is this romantic at all? Do you feel love blossoming?" Stella really, really couldn't tell if Jesse was being serious, or if they were just teasing slightly.

She ignored her (_overwhelmingly crushing_) feelings towards Jesse in favor of considering how the tandem bike ride was actually making her feel.

"... how to put it... it's more like a sense of trust is blossoming."

Jesse hummed, considering this input rather seriously. "Is that so... okay, then don't pedal. I'll pedal."

Stella blinked at Jesse, shifting so that she could sit comfortably (or, well, as comfortably as she could considering she was sitting on a bike seat) without the pedals smacking into her flats. "Ah, okay."

They didn't get two blocks before Stella was slamming her hands back into the handlebars aggressively, making Jesse jump a little and almost swerve the bike into a bush in surprise from where they'd been pedaling as hard as they could for the past few minutes. "_Goddamnit, let me pedal too, I'm feeling so guilty about this!_"

"Ah, I see... um... well, you can hardly put your hands around my waist the way we're riding..." Jesse hummed a soft laugh at the idea; Stella would probably have to cling to Jesse's clothes with how far they were from one another. "Well, never mind, let's just head home."

Stella huffed a laugh, carefully adjusting her hands so that she could resume pedaling. "Cool."

* * *

"Okay, so I decided to draw a little based on today's experience..."

Stella took the sketch that Jesse offered to her.

"_If you'd like..._" Rosaline patted the literal _tandem bike_ she was leaning on, flicking back a perfect lock of dark hair back. "_We could go for a ride._"

"... this is so dorky..." Stella chuckled, rubbing a hand through her hair. Rosaline's character had been established...

Well, to put it simply, as a badass.

"How do I put it... whatever popularity element Rosaline has is completely nonexistent, sweetheart," she said, ignoring the way her _heart fluttered_ at calling her crush such a sweet name.

Jesse either didn't notice or just thought it was something Stella did, because they tapped her lip with a thoughtful hum. "Okay... then..." They took the sketch and amended it.

"_Only three people can ride behind me!_" Rosaline called, gesturing at her... four-seat tandem bike.

_Four seats?!_

"_Get out of the way!_" one girl shouted angrily, taking ahold of the seat and trying to yank it back to herself on the page. "_I'm sitting here today!_"

"_No way!_" the guy argued, trying to yank it back to _him_self. "_Don't joke with me, this is mine!_"

Rosaline turned gallantly to Juliet. "_Hey, Jules,_" she said, beaming proudly, "_I've been saving the second seat just for you._"

Juliet fidgeted. "_I..._"

"_Eh?_"

"_No way!_" Juliet burst into tears and ran away from Rosaline, to the other girl's dismay. "_How many other people are going to be on the bike?!_"

"_Juliet!_"

"_It's useless...!_" Juliet sobbed to herself as she sprinted off the page. "_I'm hated for saying such a selfish thing...!_"

Stella stared down at the page. Then back up at Jesse. "This... how does this end...?"

"All of the seats are taken in the end," Jesse responded promptly.

There was a long period of them staring at the page.

Then a little, little smile crept over Jesse's face. It wasn't mischievous; not quite.

It was the smile of someone who'd gotten an idea.

(_And how Stella adored seeing that expression on Jesse's face._)

* * *

"_Yo, Juliet!_" Rosaline waved enthusiastically from where she was standing next to a tandem bicycle. "_Over here!_"

"_Eh...?! What's this?_" Juliet asked, as she approached the bicycle.

Rosaline blushed slightly, but proceeded to plow forward anyway. "_Oh, you know... I felt bad that we couldn't go home together yesterday, so I scraped up some money and got a tandem bike! Now we can ride home together!_"

The students around the two sniggered and pointed, but Juliet was staring up at Rosaline's face, the other girl beaming proudly at her stroke of innovation.

"_Rosaline... would sacrifice her popularity just so she can go home with me...?_" Juliet lowered her head, smiling a secret, happy little smile to herself. "_Maybe I do have a chance..._"

Out loud, however, she spoke, "_I would love to ride home with you, Rosaline._"

"Awwwww, this is so cute!" one of the girls in Stella's class gushed over the scene. "Look how willing Juliet is to be embarrassed along with Rosaline just so they can be together! And Rosaline totally gave up her 'cool' persona just so they could ride home...!"

"Oh, but if Casey Walters kills one of them off _now_, I'm going to _kill them!_ You can't do that to this poor innocent couple! Just look how happy they are!"

"Totally. It's such a good respite from all the murders and horror. You think so too, right, Stella?"

Stella jolted out of her thoughts. "What? Oh. Yeah, the bicycle- the bicycle scene was... was really cute."

_Willing to sacrifice popularity just to go home with Jesse..._

* * *

"Jesse!" Stella nearly shouted across the courtyard, face turning the color of about ten cherries in a bowl but ignoring the stares and whispers from where she was on the tandem bike. "C'mon, let's head back!"

Jesse blinked at the sight of Stella waving from where she was on the tandem bike across the entire school yard.

Then gave a little huff of laughter and started jogging to where she was.

"I guess she liked it..."

* * *

**A/N: Well, Stella has embarrassed herself so totally that it's not even worth having a crush on Jesse anymore... _nah_ who am I kidding she's totally in love with this oblivious dork lol**

**Responses to reviews!**

**Raintag: Stella tries to be put together... but nah she's a pan disaster. / In the anime it's not actually horror, it's shoujo manga, but the person writing it is this super serious guy sooo xD / No no that was perfect. It made my heart fly like Peter PAN. (i am so sorry)**

**Toni42: Heeee x3 / Yes, they would rather, unfortunately xD **

**ChibotleKentucky: Hehe, I'm guessing you like the ship too?**

**Welp, that's all for now! See ya, so long, and g'bye!**

**x.X. A.L. X.x**


End file.
